Books, arts and culture

Alexander McQueen

An enigma remembered

L'ENFANT terrible. Hooligan. Genius. Lee Alexander McQueen’s life makes for an intriguing story: a modern-day fairy tale infused with the darkness of a Greek tragedy. Few really understood Britain’s most accomplished fashion designer, a sensitive visionary who reinvented fashion in so many ways before committing suicide in February 2010, aged 40.

After his death, the Alexander McQueen label still thrives. Last year Sarah Burton, McQueen's successor, designed Kate Middleton's royal wedding dress. In New York, people queued for hours to see “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty”, a retrospective of his work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition attracted more than 650,000 visitors making it one of the most-visited shows in the Met’s history. At this heightened McQueen moment, publishers are keen to capitalise on his story—at least three books bearing his name are out this autumn, revealing the man and his work with varying degrees of intimacy.

Judith Watt, his friend and a fashion historian at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, where McQueen studied, tells her version of his life in “Alexander McQueen: The Life and Legacy”. The most comprehensive biography of McQueen thus far, it tells his story from a tailor's apprentice on Savile Row to his seminal “bumster” trousers and on to his tragic end. She uses never-before-published photographs, ephemera and anecdotes from his closest friends and collaborators, such as heiress Daphne Guinness and choreographer Les Child. Simon Ungless, his fellow student, recalls how he and McQueen accidentally lost the garments from the designer’s first collection after a night of partying.

Ms Watt details how McQueen was often misunderstood: his autumn 1995 “Highland Rape” collection was called misogynistic. Actually, she writes, “it was about genocide—the rape of a culture”. McQueen was a depressive but that may also have been the source of his inspiration. She says he often felt that “out of his despair came flights of beauty, images and ideas simply beyond the capability of most other designers of his generation.”

By contrast, “Alexander McQueen: Evolution” is a general introduction to the designer. A 216-page coffee-table book, it is crammed with runway shots and written by an obvious fashion outsider, Katherine Gleason (the author of titles such as “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Wicca and Witchcraft”). Ms Gleason presents all 35 of McQueen’s eponymous shows using the same format: a brief introduction detailing the venue and theme, a description of the presentation and clothes, and a round-up of each season’s reviews from critics. It neatly details his influences (his Scottish heritage, the destruction of nature, death and Yoruba mythology) and displays the dark drama of his shows, but it is all rather impersonal and distant from both McQueen and his collections.

Anne Deniau’s poignant narrative, “Love Looks Not With the Eyes: Thirteen Years With Lee Alexander McQueen”, is a magnificent work that offers a more intimate portrait of the designer through images. Ms Deniau, a photographer, first documented McQueen behind the scenes at his Givenchy runway debut in January 1997. She went on to photograph backstage at McQueen’s shows for 13 years. “I wanted you to document my life from the beginning, in your unique way,” Ms Deniau remembers McQueen telling her in 2009.

The striking photographs show a side of McQueen very few saw, capturing him as he cuts fabric, smokes a cigarette in contemplation, and smiles with his friend Kate Moss, a model. The last few photographs, taken during the posthumous presentation of McQueen’s final collection, “Angels and Demons”, are among the most touching for his absence. One in particular stands out: a sombre Sarah Burton, who completed the collection after he died, ruffles the feathers on one of the designs that she finished for her mentor.

All three books are visual feasts that document a brilliant mind at work and a bewitching chapter of fashion history. They stop short of revealing the man himself, but they will leave fans nostalgic for the savage beauty of his designs.

Oh my word, how jolly awfully terribly important. Could the world keep going round without such things?

"In New York, people queued for hours to see “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty”, a retrospective of his work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art..... The exhibition attracted more than 650,000 visitors"....650,000 idiots...except the pickpockets and street vendors, who did well.

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months." (Oscar Wilde)

"Fashion is a decision making system for those who lack minds of their own" (Me).